When talking about the past of Baidang and Amitabha, we have to talk about the Xiaoshan Temple. Buddhism is deeply rooted in the people, and it has naturally enriched the local customs and customs.
Baidang Xiaoshan Temple is also called Xiaoshan Zen Temple. On a hillside at the southern end of Baidang Hill, you can sit north and south in the green shade and enjoy a panoramic view of the east and west. Facing the Yangtze River has good feng shui. Although it is not very big, it has the aura of a tiger perched on a dragon's plate appearing there.
The temple is divided into two parts: front and back. People live in the front and Buddha statues are worshiped in the back. There is a patio in the middle, and aisles on both sides of the patio connect the front and back. When you enter the gate and look up, you can see the Buddha statue enshrined in the middle of the back entrance. The Buddha's light is really shining all over the place, and you can see it at a glance. This is the scene back then.
Xiaoshan Temple is also a very ancient Zen temple. It is said to have been built during the Kangxi period and has a history of more than 340 years. Because of its efficacious reputation, the incense used to be very prosperous. In the past, when boatmen sailing up the Yangtze River to the pier passed by here, they would moor their boats and go ashore to offer incense. Of course, the surrounding common people's houses, pilgrims who seek wealth, children, and offer incense to fulfill their wishes, also continue to come all year round.
This is another very special temple. To say it is inseparable from the fact that in later temples, there were monks and nuns practicing in the same temple. The so-called pure land only exists in people's imagination.
As far back as I can remember, there was only one monk in the temple after liberation. His common surname was Zhang. He was born with the appearance of Maitreya Buddha. People on the street called him "Monk Zhang"; there was also another monk. The nun who practices Buddhism with her hair, her common surname is Zhou, is thin and gentle. People on the street call her "Aunt Three Weeks", and some also call her "Aunt Three from the Xiaomiao Temple". They adopted a pair of children and lived in the temple like a family, eating from the same pot.
The adopted son is Zhang Bangru, a nephew of Monk Zhang’s family. If you are a horse, we will still call him "little horse" when you grow old. He has a lively and cheerful personality, and he studied late, only one class higher than me.
This monk, I heard from the old man, is from Lujiang County. He has been a monk since he was a child and has been a novice monk in the Shuifu Temple on Lao Po Gangxia Street. One time before liberation, the Japanese bombed the Shuifu Temple and caused it to collapse. He had no place to live, so he was sent to a small mountain temple when he was a child. Aunt Zhou Zhou is from Tongcheng, and her accent has not changed much in her old age. She was driven out of a destroyed nunnery in old Tongcheng during the early days of the Cultural Revolution during the "Four Olds" campaign, and was then driven to the small mountain temple by the "revolutionary generals".
At that time, when young revolutionary generals did good deeds, they had to carry out a favor to the end. It is said that now is the new society, and all monks and nuns must be eradicated. Monks and nuns are the remnants of "feudal cultivators", and socialism does not support "parasites". Two paths were drawn for Monk Zhang and Aunt Zhou. These were also the only two paths that monks and nuns in the countryside could take at that time: either they would be obedient and get married in the temple, or they would completely get out and return to their hometown to return to secular life. In this way, the two of them adopted a pair of children and ostensibly organized a family in the temple.
Although the small temple is small, it can provide shelter from wind and rain, but a "family of four" can live in it and cherish it. Aunt Zhou Zhou is a gentle and cautious person. Because she is practicing cultivation, people who don't know her are no different from ordinary people. And because practitioners have to live at home and cannot do without food, rice, oil and salt, that monk "doesn't care about family affairs", and usually it is Zhou Aunt who goes to the streets. Therefore, most people on the street are familiar with her, and the interpersonal relationships are naturally good.
During the planned economy at that time, Aunt Zhou went to the streets. If she wanted to buy some urgent supplies that were supplied by ticket, people from "stores and supply and marketing cooperatives" would secretly sell some to her whenever she asked. Her, maybe this is the human heart of the world. Destroy and destroy, superstitious and superstitious. Between life and superstition, there are always people who secretly plant Bodhi in their hearts and keep the Buddha in their hearts.
In the 1950s and 1960s, life was tight for everyone, so this small mountain temple had little popularity. However, they also need to eat, three meals a day, and they also have a pair of children. So Aunt Zhou Zhou began to clear up wasteland and cultivate land near the small mountain temple so that she could have some food to eat; the monk Zhang was not idle either, he had a skill in weaving homespun cloth. At that time, many farmers were growing cotton, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, so Monk Zhang was focused on nothing else and was weaving homespun cloth for others all year round. It was good to earn some money to help support the family, and also allowed my adopted son Zhang Bangru to finish high school and be sent to the countryside.
The small mountain temple had a bad fate. During the Cultural Revolution, it lost all its popularity.
When the "feudal superstition" was broken, the situation was even worse, and another even greater disaster was suffered.
During the "half-month" of the lunar calendar in the countryside, it is a folk custom to make new rice cakes and invite the old Bodhisattva to thank the old Bodhisattva for blessing the area with abundant grains and prosperous livestock. Although everyone was used to it and no longer invited the old Bodhisattva, on the first night of the "half-July" of the year, the young revolutionary generals picked up the matter of "breaking the four olds" again, saying that they wanted to "break the four olds" "Destroying the Four Olds" will be carried out to the end. Then he went to the small mountain temple and dragged all the Buddhas and Buddhas enshrined in the temple to the gate of Baidang Yonglai Drainage and Irrigation Station on a cart, and placed them on a large diesel tank lying horizontally on the roadside.
The next morning, taking advantage of the "half-July" day, the young revolutionary generals stood on high stools, holding up red tin broadcast tubes in their hands, raising their arms in unison and shouting slogans, To the people who took to the streets in the morning, they vigorously promoted the revolutionary significance and importance of "eliminating superstition and emancipating the mind." After a chaotic morning, I went back to other revolutionary work.
A few days after the incident, Aunt Zhou went to the street and watched helplessly all the Bodhisattvas, big and small, being pulled over on a cart by the Baidang Health Center at that time. The ointment is for firewood. "Amitabha, sin, sin, sin," I didn't dare to think at all.
In this way, the small mountain temple is really "empty of all four elements" and has really become a place where "Monk Zhang and his family" live. That day, Zhou Gu calmed down and continued to plant her bit of land that had been reclaimed from wasteland. Monk Zhang also continued to weave his bit of homespun cloth, and it was as if nothing had happened to Xiangzi.
There is only an old lady with small feet who occasionally brings some agricultural and sideline products to visit the mountain gate. Still silently facing the empty shrine, he devoutly placed some offerings and lit a stick of incense. After the incense burned for a while, the ashes fell off. No one can know what the old lady was thinking as she knelt down.
If you don’t change your mind, who will save you from your suffering? If you can turn back, why do you need me to be so compassionate?
The small mountain temple is as calm as ever, but it is still faintly exuding the brilliance of Buddha nature.
Later, his adopted son Zhang Bangru "sent educated youth back to the city" and recruited workers to work in the local Baidang store. At that time, Monk Zhang's Aunt Zhou was still alive, and she was already living a difficult life in her twilight years. The adopted daughter has already married and started a family. In this way, they discussed that no matter how difficult the "family situation" is, they still have to let their adopted son start a family. I first brought someone else’s son to raise him. Now that he is older, he cannot delay his child’s youth.
So, I asked people to go around to find matchmakers, and with the blessing of the old Bodhisattva, everything went smoothly, and I found a girl surnamed Wang from Tanggou Ancient Town. He built a small hut next to the small mountain temple and allowed his adopted son Zhang Bangru to get married and live a small life. Later, during the reform and opening up, religious policies were also implemented. As a local small mountain temple, the locals have always had feelings for it. Now people are allowed to offer incense and worship Buddha, and the small mountain temple gradually has incense again.
Then again, the "Zhang Bangru family" has a Buddhist relationship with the small mountain temple, which is formed by historical conditions. Of course, they still have to rely on the small mountain temple to live. Later, Zhang Bangru was laid off at an old age, his mind changed with the situation, and he devoted himself to Buddha. Since he was a child, he has been exposed to the Buddhist rituals of offering incense and worshiping Buddha, morning bells and evening drums, chanting sutras and meditating, and it is naturally not too difficult for him to do them. Self-nature suddenly appears, and you can finally turn around. He devoutly converted to Buddhism from a layman. At this point, Shi Shi had another disciple, Guogui.
When the time came in 1995, Zhang Bangru, who was already a disciple of the Shi family at that time, Guo Gui, saw that the small mountain temple was dilapidated for a long time and felt compassion. He made a great wish to rebuild the temple and build a golden body. So he made good friends, raised funds everywhere, and completely renovated the small mountain temple. He also went to Jiuhua Mountain to invite the "Three Giant Buddhas" and other Buddha statues to worship. After hearing the news, a local layman (fishermen) from the former central brigade donated a "flesh Buddha" to Xiaoshan Temple alone, which made the pure land more solemn and ended the embarrassing situation of "empty of all four elements" in Xiaoshan Temple's Buddhist hall.
It is said that the small mountain temple was built in the 34th year of the Republic of China (1945). A boatman from Bali Lake in Jiangxi Province sailed to the Fenghuangzhou River here. When encountering wind and waves, he made a wish to avert danger. He felt deeply that this temple was a blessing and efficacious, and later invited more than 100 people to do so. Believers donated money to repair it once, and this is the second time Guogui has been renovated. Really, the so-called possession only depends on its dependent origination and cessation. As soon as you think about something, you should give up your mind and complete it immediately. That moment is called possession; once you miss it, it may never be recovered and never exist again.
We are all ordinary people, and Buddhism is vast and profound, so naturally it is difficult to understand it. But we can worship the Buddha, use the Buddha's wisdom to illuminate our lives, and gain cultivation and understanding of life. In this way, you can obtain the purification of your own soul, and slowly calm down your impetuous mortal heart in the noisy world of mortals.
Bodhi has no tree, and the mirror is not a stand. There is nothing in the first place, so how can it cause dust.
The introduction of Buddhism into China had a profound impact on Chinese culture and formed an important part of Chinese culture. As for the fact that the small mountain temple can still survive today, I think this also leaves behind a humanistic heritage and a cultural confidence. Otherwise, what else can we use to teach our children and grandchildren about civilization in the future?